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Subject: Re: ply search vs elo rating - proposed formula

Author: Dave Gomboc

Date: 14:06:18 10/21/99

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On October 21, 1999 at 16:05:36, Jeremiah Penery wrote:

>On October 21, 1999 at 14:23:59, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>
>>IIRC, Amir once said that Junior extends even more aggressively than DB.
>>Unfortunately, he didn't get any quantitative evidence or examples.
>
>I think that common sense can show that this can't be true.
>
>At 200M NPS, why was DB getting 'only' 12-14 ply in 3 minutes/move?  The reason
>is that all the rest of it was extensions.
>
>At 200k NPS (or whatever it is Junior gets - Even at 400k, it is still 500x
>slower than DB), how many ply can it get in 3 minutes/move? 10 ply? 11? (I
>really don't know, so someone please enlighten me. :)
>
>So, even though Junior is at least 500x slower than DB, it can reach comparable
>depths _AND_ extend more?  I don't think so.

I don't think that's the claim.  Rather, the claim is that for a given level of
brute-force search, Junior will generally extend selected lines of play even
further than DB.  I think it's clear that Junior's not going to search as many
plies full-width, nor do I think Amir ever suggested that.

It's interesting, but I really don't know if it's correct or not.

>>It's also difficult to know how much knowledge Hiarcs has, unless you happen to
>>be its author.
>
>True.  However, it can be said that it most likely has more knowledge than other
>micro programs (except CS-Tal).  The more knowledge a program has, the slower
>its evaluation, and so the slower the NPS, becauase it will take more CPU cycles
>to complete.  Hiarcs is much slower in terms of NPS than most, and therefore
>there is more knowledge.  Whether this knowledge is entirely useful always is
>certainly debatable.

NPS arguments between multiple programs are complete bullshit.  How people count
nodes is completely up to them.  Hans Berliner would count nodes for B*, and
you'd think "wow, this is really impressive!" until you realized that he was
doing alpha-beta underneath those nodes!

CST can do 700 nps, and Junior can do 1x10^6 nps, and that doesn't convince me
that CST has more knowledge than Junior, simply because I don't know what each
developer is counting as a node, never mind whether that node is visited briefly
or a great deal of time is expended on it.

>>  Sometimes I feel like I know more about DB than I do about the
>>commercials.  Rebel excepted, of course, thanks to Ed's participation here...
>>which is much appreciated.
>
>I am very glad that Ed participates so much here.  I believe he does as much as
>anyone to further progress in computer-chess (Rebel vs. GM, his experiments,
>such as Chess in 2010, PB-on vs. PB-off, etc.), and hope he continues to do so.
>Because of Ed's rather outgoing attitude about his program, I will buy Rebel
>before I buy any other commercial program. :)

I'll support it too... though I am waiting for something that runs under NT. :-)

>Jeremiah

Dave



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